Neil Gaiman

Monday, March 05, 2001

Permissions... well, good news, bad news. According to the copyright office website:

Therefore, the U. S. copyright in any work published or copyrighted prior to January 1, 1923, has expired by operation of law, and the work has permanently fallen into the public domain in the United States. For example, on January 1, 1997, copyrights in works first published or copyrighted before January 1, 1922, have expired; on January 1, 1998, copyrights in works first published or copyrighted before January 1, 1923, have expired. Unless the copyright law is changed again, no works under protection on January 1, 1999 will fall into the public domain in the United States until January 1, 2019.Which means that two of the poems I needed to quote from are public domain.

The third, unfortunately, isn't... and the request originally went to the wrong people. So I've just re-sent it to the right people. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

So, today, apart from Permissions emergencies, is trying to fix the UK and the US blurbs. The UK blurb feels just right, but is factually wonky; the US one has all its facts right, but doesn't quite feel like the book yet (as someone who read it said, "It could be about a war between rival clans of elves in the US" -- which, I hasten to add, it isn't). So I need to try and get the UK jacket copy closer to the events of the book, and the US jacket copy closer to the weirdness of the book. And I ought to do it before close of play today...